I went to see The Dark Knight Rises yesterday afternoon, which was pretty much an all-day affair; everyone I was going with agreed that we wanted to see the movie in IMAX, and the closest IMAX theater is 20 minutes away. We had to pick tickets up and figured that if we wanted good seats we had to get to the theater an hour early. As a result, we left at 12:30 for a 2:15 movie that ran pretty much right up to my softball practice at 6:00.

That’s to say that I missed pretty much the entire Pirate game yesterday afternoon. I was able to check the score until the first pitch, but I spent most of the time before the movie explaining things like Knightfall and No Man’s Land and The Dark Knight Returns with some woefully uninformed friends. As the lights went down for the first preview, I flicked my phone on looked: Pirates 1 Marlins 0.

Three hours later, I did the same thing. Final: Pirates 3 Marlins 0. I wasn’t surprised. I said, “I bet someone hit a home run,” turned to the box score, and saw, “Pedro Alvarez (21)” at the bottom. It’s a weird feeling that I’m not used to applying to the Pirates. Living in North Carolina, the Steelers are on TV here almost every Sunday (I live just outside of “Panthers territory” which means that the Panthers are always the FOX game, but that they can run a CBS game opposite the Panthers and the Steelers are the #1 AFC choice here, plus, when they play an NFC team they’re usually FOX’s third choice behind the Panthers and Redskins) and there are plenty of bars full of Steelers fans for the few Sundays that the games aren’t on TV. Still, there’s are always a few weekends I just don’t feel like spending all Sunday afternoon in a bar, for whatever reason, and I’m not worried enough about the outcome of the game to burn the time and money to do it. Most of the time, this instinct is right; the Steelers win easily and I don’t spend any time worrying about having seen the game.

This is not a feeling I’m used to applying to the Pirates, though. And still, there it was yesterday, waiting for me when I turned my phone back on after the movie. The Pirate players have been expecting to win for a while now; I suspect that we Pirate fans will take a little longer to get used to this.

About Pat Lackey

In 2005, I started a WHYGAVS instead of working on organic chemistry homework. Many years later, I've written about baseball and the Pirates for a number of sites all across the internet, but WHYGAVS is still my home. I still haven't finished that O-Chem homework, though.